UK Here is a rough cut from a sports injury web site. ***********************Gilmore's groin involves a tear of the adductor muscles, usually high up near the attachment to the public bone. It is sometimes called the Sportsman's Hernia, there is not actually a hernia present. It is common in sports were a great deal of strain is placed on the groin and pelvic area such as soccer.

Although injuries vary, the features of a Gilmore's groin include a torn external oblique aponeurosis (ribbon like structure), tendon torn from the pubic bone.

Symptoms include:

Pain in the groin increased by running, sprinting, twisting and turning. After training the athlete may be stiff or sore. The day after training / playing the athlete may have pain when turning or even getting out of a car. Coughing and sneezing may also cause pain. It is claimed that in 30% of athletes there is a history of sudden injury but the majority indicate it to be a gradual overuse injury. ***************************************Bloody unpleasant it is too. Am trying for the rehab minus surgery option at the moment so here's hoping [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif[/IMG]

Ken : Hope that tear isn't too bad; what degree tear did the doc diagnos?--sounds like a common MA-type injury! Good luck.

Me: Back on track! Classes have felt better and better---although left sided kicks are nasty! My right hamstring is still tight, and sore after class, but progress is being made. I wasn't going to test for my green belt, but my instructor says I should. We'll see. If I'm injury-free, and my flexibility in my right ham improves more, I will. At this point, I feel "passable", but I don't want passable----I want precision, speed, and power.

Bah, maybe that's why I keep getting injuried.

Dynamic stretching is still the core, although I'm adding more passive static throughout the day. As an interesting note, my right-side leg swings are a bit higher, but whats cool is I can SLOWLY swing my leg up to max height; balance, isometric strength, and flexibility feels great.

My left, pfft. That's another story

(For those that may be confused by my tale of injuries--left ham twice, right ham recently once. All pulls happened on the supporting leg)

Ok, so NOW when on earth am I gonna get my ass to the gym and start doing squats and deadlifts?!?! I keep putting it off, either because I'm injuried, or I have a belt testing. I'm sure this will make a huge difference once I start--it's just a matter of making more time, as with most things. So, at the end of last nights class, I attempted a side split; well, you know what I mean. No where close to a split, but much farther apart than I had ever been before. I think in a previous post I had measured at 5 1/2 feet from heel-to-heel--I was on 1 by 1 tiles, so it was easy. The dojang is hardwood, so I have no idea.

But progress is there, and that's all I need. [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif[/IMG]

Grade 2 mate though I am not so sure. Busy re habing at the moment. I actually did a light session last week though bowed out of anything hectic and felt no worse for it.

Will try again on Thursday and see if I can do a little more. If not it's back to rest. To cap it all received Combat Conditioning in the post last week. Couldn't resist a "Royal Court" session albeit a short one. Interestingly bridging (not done that in 20 years!) made everything feel a whole lot better but that may be first flush enthusiasm. Keep going with it!

So far, I like the book. I can see how Furey's methods would be more applicable to martial arts training, than say, heavy resistance training. HOWEVER....

Furey makes it sound like if you lift weights, you'll be an inflexible, weak, injury-prone zombie. I cannot, for the life of me, see how weighted squats, lunges, and stiff-legged deadlifts could be anything but benificial to a martial artist. If anything, the lack thereof has made me more injury prone.

Also, he makes some pretty "out-there" claims about doing hindu squats (They'll condition your internal organs) and I'm not sure about that spinning exercise. Do you do that at the beginning of your workout, and fight through the dizzyness, or at the end, so you can vomit with a sense of accomplishment?

Regardless, I'm slowly adding hindu squats and pushups; We do a (very) shortened version of the bridge in-class already, but I'm extremely hesitant to try a bridge on my forehead, let alone my nose. I'd like to hear from others about that one.

...Other than commenting on Combat Conditioning, nothing new in the Kurz department. Still doing dynamic stretching, pretty much 2x a day. Going to test on June 12th, so I'm not making any radical changes to what I'm doing now. After the testing, I'm implement more stuff into my program over the summer.

Looks like a bit of a forum rollback; at least all posts didn't get deleted!

One thing new---at the advice of my massage therapist, I started taking magnesium. She had mentioned that I had "extreme" lactic acid buildup (yes, you can palpate it, or the effects of, more likely) and said magnesium would help buffer it. Well, I took it one step further. Picked up a post-workout mix caled CytoMax. I had tried it years ago, just thought it was expensive gatorade. It's a mix of glucose polymers, potassium, and sodium. SOUNDS more or less like gatorade. Wellll.....

First time I tried it(taken before and after class) I felt awesome the next day---no next-day-gimp-legs. Pfft, could be nothing more than a placebo effect. So, I upped the bar.

In a classic Mike-pushes-the-envelope style, I biked to work (10km, and having to do a big valley on the way), then biked to TKD after work (maybe, oh, 4-5km), had an hour of class <which I ended up sparring a red belt, 3rd dan black belt, and a 1st dan black belt! woot!>, then biked home about 6km(back up the valley). The next day? Felt GREAT!!!

I hope this continues; the "sore" legs has been a bit of a crux in my training, and once again, may have contributed to my injuries. UKFF had mentioned a specific deficiency that would cause increased muscle pain and cramping, and it could very well have been potassium, as that is a sign of hypokalemia. At any rate, seems to be working.

Progress is there. Last week did my testing, and all went well. Like I had stated, after this testing, I wanted to change up/add on to my workouts.

This will include a combo of specific leg strength training, core work, and possibly some endurance training for sparring. Of course, stretching will be an everyday thing. I want (heck, need) my flexibility to improve a great deal; I'm at the level now where more dynamic kicks are being taught (spinning hook kick, jumping reverse cresent, etc), and flexibility and strength are essential for progress.

As far as injuries go, things seem good. There's still a fair amount of restricted range of motion in my right hamstring, and this is very evident in my left leg kicks. But, live and learn....

As a side note: My wife is quite the workout freak, but up until recently, *NEVER* worked on flexibility; Cold, she couldn't even get her fingertips close to the ground while standing. After only one month of post-workout passive static stretching, she can almsot put her palms on the ground while standing, cold. !!!! She's an avid runner and lifts weights 5 days a week---so, how important is strength? She just proved it.

Ken : How's the injury? I slightly pulled a hip flexor doing a spinning kick, and thought "holy hell, I hope it's not a Gillmore!!!"

After lots of physio it's become a nagging ache and I am training almost as normal.

I'm back on the Kurz routine and have a daily workout sorted out which is Warm Up, Dynamic stretches to start, then a mixture of some Furey exercises and a body weight set taight to me some years back by a friend of mine who was a PT instructor in the Royal Marines at the time.

This week should see the start of some short sprints again to see how the groin holds up under pressure. I'm into the last 5 weeks of training before my Dan grading now and have to say confidence aint too high at the moment regarding whether or not I will pass but I always get up tight before gradings so we'll just have to see.

I can totally relate, Ken! Did the same thing a while back, 4th digit on my left foot. All I can say is tape it, and let it heal!

So, I rigged up a pulley system for stretching, similar to the Flexi-max stretching aid. Basically, it's just a pulley with a rope through it, and I use to to stretch in various kicking positions.

I like it, and I know it may not be any better that the basic passive static ground stretching, but it's "another tool in the toolbox". Hours at mt TKD dojang have been cut for the summer, so I'll have to do more on my own time. Re-newed my membership at the local university gym, so I'm eager to get in there and work on those deadlifts [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif[/IMG]